⭐︎ minority influence✅ Flashcards
how does a minority change the opinion of others?
what are the 3 processes?
through internalisation - both pubic behaviour and private beliefs are changed
- consistency
- commitment
- flexibility
what does consistency mean?
what are the 2 types of consistency?
when minoritys view gains more interest , makes ppl re-think their views.
1- synchronic = ppl in minority all say the same thing
2- diachronic= they say the same thing for some time
what does commitment do?
what should these activities create?
what is the augmentation Principle?
it helps gain attention eg through extreme activities
create some risk to the minority to demonstrate commitment to the cause
when ppl risk their life bc of strong motivations, even if there are restraints, to get their message across eg protests
why is flexibility important?
what did Nemeth say about the negative side of consistency?
what does he suggest instead?
balancing flexibility and constancy shows they are open minded and flexible to other ppls views therefore making more ppl want to become involved
argued consistency and repeating of the same argument is rigid and off putting to majority
that minority should adapt their point of view and accept reasonable counter- arguments
what is the snowball effect?
what happens due to the snowfall effect?
this is when the minority become the majority, ppl become converted.
social change has occurred
💚💙moscovici et al.
what did he do?
HOW MANY OF THE PPTS WERE CONFEDS?
what were the 2 conditions of the group?
172 female participants who were told that they were taking part in a colour perception task. The participants were placed in groups of six and shown 36 slides, which were all varying shades of blue. The ppts had state out loud the colour of each slide.
2/6 ppts were confeds
- COND 1: (consistent) 2 confeds said that all slides were green
- COND 2: (inconsistent) confeds said some were green some were blue
findings:
what are the findings of the two conditions?
What does this show?
- COND 1: consistent condition, 32% of real ppts gave the same answer on at leaser one trial
- COND 2: inconsistent condition, the real ppts only agreed on 1.25% of the trials (around 1%)
shows the importance of consistency in minority influence
AO3 moscivici
✅3 strengths
✅moscovicis research shows the importance of consistency
✅Research shows that change to minority position involves deeper thought - Martin found people were less willing to change opinions if they had listened to a minority rather than majority. Suggests it had been processed more deeply.
✅ high internal validity … standardised procedure that can easily be replicated
AO3 - moscicivici
❌3 weaknesses
❌minority influence research often involves artificial tasks - lack external validity
❌ethical issues - mosc. deceiving his ppts, they were told that they were taking part in a colour perception test. This also means that Mosc did not gain fully informed consent. Although it is seen as unethical to deceive participants, Mosc experiment required deception in order to achieve valid results. If the participants were aware of the true aim, they might have displayed demand characteristics and acted differently.
❌ mosc. bias and UNREPRESENTITIVE sample of 172 female ppts from America. cant generalise the results to other populations, eg male ppts, and we cant conclude that male participants would respond to minority influence in the same way. research often suggests that females are more likely to conform and further research is required to determine the effect of minority influence on male participants.
